It is sometimes necessary to make a hole in the ground and in an area where the ground surface is soil, or a material having similar mechanical properties to soil. This could be for a variety of reasons including for the creation of a pot-hole to inspect buried services such as electricity, gas and water, or for the inspection of tree roots or buried rock, or for providing a mounting hole for a fence post or for planting trees.
Currently, implements such as picks, shovels and crow bars are used to make such holes in the ground. However, these implements are labour intensive and use of these implements often disturbs a larger area than needed and can result in damage to underground services.
It has been tried to use water based methods to make holes in the ground. However, these require the removal of the resultant sullage, which can be messy and time consuming.